Sustainable Development: ‘Be a Leader and Inspire,’ UN Deputy Secretary-General Urges as 2030 Deadline Approaches

The Special event licensed Keeping the SDG Promise: The Accelerated Path is Taking Place on the Sidelines of the High-Level Political Forum (HONG PHAT) is underway, to get the Sustainable Development Goals back on track and leave no country behind.

It will promote the so-called “High Impact Initiative” supported by the entire UN development system and key investment strategies, while also highlighting countries.

Speaking exclusively with United Nations News Mayra Lopes, UN Deputy Secretary-General, highlighted six key areas of transformation to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are essential for success: food systems, energy access and affordability; digital connectivity, education, employment and social protection; climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

United Nations News: The global community is meeting this week at the High-Level Political Forum. We still have six years to go until the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What is your message to leaders?

Amina Mohammed: Be leaders. Be leaders for people and what they need and the promises made in the SDG agenda. Be leaders for the planet and what we need to do to achieve a 1.5 degree world.

Be leaders and inspirations who are responsible for unchartedAnd leave the United Nations knowing that this is a place where you will hear those voices, their hopes and aspirations. And that will give you the energy and inspiration to go back and do the right thing.

United Nations News: The UN system is united around six key transitions or pathways to accelerate this. Can you tell us more about these areas and why it is so important to leave no one behind?

Amina Mohammed: We had very clear marching orders from Member States when they really got a wake-up call about how seriously off track we were with the SDGs last year. 15 percent, 17 percent in some places. Not a satisfactory level. And so we had to think if this is an acceleration to 2030, what is going to put the resources in to support the investments that will benefit the SDGs? All 17 goals. And you don’t go out there talking about 17 ideas.

These are signposts that take us to where we need to go. So we’ve been clear about what those investments might be. Where businesses are going, where the public sector is already there, where we can scale up, where the UN can reposition itself to help countries get there. And so those shifts make sense because we’re talking about food systems.

Why are we talking about the food system? We have felt the impact of COVID and what it has done to disrupt the world. We have felt the impact of Ukraine on the food system firsthand. Of course, we responded with the Black Sea Grain Initiative and that has saved lives.

But I think it’s clear that we can do more. And relying on others is not always the best way. It’s also a system that keeps us from achieving a 1.5-degree world.

The second is the energy transition. How do we make sure energy is available to everyone? Access – whether it’s for cooking or for small-scale industries like education and health – and really look at it off-grid. Not everything has to be on-grid. We can find micro-grids that power entire communities – and especially if we’re trying to link it to food systems.

Third is connectivity. Of course, new technologies are available now. How do we connect people? And in this particular case, for what? Well, for financial services for women. We want to make sure that you can engage with the world without leaving your village, on e-commerce. That needs to be powered, to be connected.

And then we also think, education is not in good shape. So that’s the fourth transformation. We don’t want to achieve education transformation overnight. That’s the ultimate goal that you want to put in there. But the first thing to notice is that young people are unemployed. They’re not getting the education they deserve.

You want to connect them to the market. And to do that, if you’re transforming the skills of the food system, how can you do that with technology and do it better and more equitably? Close the gaps that exist today. Create jobs that people feel they’re losing or have lost.

And then, to put this into context, I think two important things: the resilience of people who need to be supported by, I would say, a social protection base that comes from the GDP of the country. Then you have some resilience and you can make sure that when you have big hits like COVID-19so people don’t get lost.

Last but not least, a conducive environment will become more difficult if we do not acknowledge what we call the triple crisis: climate, biodiversity and pollution.

United Nations News: I want to touch on the digital innovation part. I want to hear if you feel hopeful and how you think we can take advantage of this new technology?

Amina Mohammed: There’s a gentleman I met recently in Barbados. He was the designer of the first search engine that we had, which was called Archie. I said to him, so tell me, what do you think about this new era of technology that you’re obviously very familiar with? And he said, “It’s very exciting, it’s very scary, and we’re not ready.” And I thought, well, maybe that captures the reality.

The Secretary-General has made his proposal to Summit of the Future about putting guardrails around potential. There’s a dark side to it, but there’s a lot of opportunity, and I think that structure will keep us safer.

It will help us move further in a connected world and we have to act on governance, on how technology is used, whether it’s algorithms that are designed to be biased against women.

But I think the more important thing is when I said to him, “Is this like the transition from horse-drawn carriages to the internal combustion engine when we industrialized?” And he said, “No, it’s more than that – because you’re talking about changing society and the way we do things.” We’re never going to be the same again because we’re going to be so much more connected.

United Nations News: We talk a lot about accelerating the SDGs, but right now we have a very challenging landscape with war and global tensions. How do you think we can still advance the SDGs in this context?

Amina Mohammed: Well, back to your first question. We need leadership. We need leadership at every level. Not just the president of a country, but at every constituency, at business, at civil society, at the youth.

That would be a big part of what gives us hope. Regenerating the United Nations [as] A stronger town hall for a global village, where voices are not only heard but acted upon.

We don’t have the same power in that arena, but we do have a voice, and we can exercise that power, and we have to remember every day that our people’s representation is diverse and our needs are complex.

Perhaps more important to me is how we find resources for the development agenda, for peace, for security. But not security in the way we pay for war; but security in the way we invest in prevention – that is development.

We find ourselves in a system that was designed in 1945 to recover from World War II. “May we never see the horror of war again.” But we have. And the same principles that we applied then, that people should have access to resources to rebuild their lives, are the same principles that we need today to say that you need long-term financing for your development, no matter where you are in the world.

My hope is that this acceleration will happen because we all understand that there is an existential threat to the world at 1.5 degrees, that humans will no longer stand on the sidelines.

And how they react depends on how much injustice they think they are being perpetrated by their local leaders, their national leaders, their international leaders. So this is a very interconnected world. Young people are energized. They are anxious because they don’t see a future.

If I go back to the process that creates many terrorists, they are not born. It is an environment of exclusion, an environment of injustice, an environment without hope.

And thus, young people become easy targets for those who want to destroy, in an unfortunate way.

So I hope that we have never been more equipped in a resourced world to do the right thing. We have a great framework and pathway to achieve this through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And I think we should just stand up and run this last mile and deliver on the promise of the SDGs.